“I should have known better.”
“How could you? We’ve been together for less than a week and under far less than ideal circumstances. But of course I didn’t mean to make you pregnant. You’ve ruined me.” His voice and face were rueful. He stroked her hair. “I had no idea my control had slipped to that extent.”
Her gaze clung to him as her free hand slid to cover her abdomen in a protective gesture that was fast becoming habitual. Something tentative and fragile in her expression seemed to catch his attention. The dark slash of his eyebrows contracted. He covered her hand with his, lacing his fingers with hers.
“The pregnancy is a total shock,” he told her. “Connecting with our son when he healed you—he’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. I can’t begin to describe my reaction to him. I’ve never felt these feelings before.”
“That’s actually a pretty good way to describe it,” she whispered. “Me either. I’m terrified.”
He kissed her, his lips moving slow and easy as he savored her. “I have no idea how to act around small new creatures. But I’m glad.”
“I am too,” she whispered. Her eyes glittered with easy moisture as she smiled at him. Then her gaze turned inward and grew haunted. “I killed five people.”
His eyes narrowed. “How do you figure?”
“It’s my fault the man in the truck got shot—”
He tapped her lips. “That one’s easy. He’s not dead. It was touch and go at first, but they say he’s going to pull through just fine.”
“Thank God,” she said, sighing.
“There were, however, four dead guards around Urien’s house that we’ve been mighty curious about. Was that you?” He searched her face. His fingers couldn’t seem to stop stroking her cheekbones, her jaw, her throat.
She grimaced and nodded.
He showed her his teeth. “I am so damn proud of you. You stepped it up when you had to. You did what needed to be done and got yourself away.”
“Yeah, well, you’re a bloodthirsty monster. Who cares what you think,” she muttered. She drifted for a few minutes and he let her be, stroking her hair. She roused enough to say, “To be honest, I was feeling bad about not feeling bad. Except for the guy in the truck. Him I just felt bad about.”
“That’s stupid and convoluted. You are going to stop it right now,” he ordered.
She gave a ghost of a giggle. “There you go again, giving orders. His Majesty is starting to feel better. Oh, speaking of majesties.” Her eyes opened very wide. “Urien actually thought he was going to be the boss of me.”
“Which was one of the things that finally got him killed.” His eyes crinkled. “Imagine that.”
She slept for a while with the easy exhaustion of a convalescent. She woke up once to say with sudden urgency, “Don’t go anywhere.”
He was dressed in cutoffs and stretched out on top of the covers, reading files, pillows piled at his back. He set them aside and gave her a steady look. “I’m not going anywhere, Pia. Not anywhere. And neither are you.”
His much-loved face was as immovable as a mountain. She nodded and relaxed. He did not pick up his reading again until she was sound asleep.
Almost dying can sure take it out of a body. The brief healing flare of Power from the peanut had taken care of essentials, but she had to do the rest on her own.
She had been unconscious for two days. Dragos had a present for her, an anti-nausea charm set in a two-carat diamond pendant necklace. The day after she woke up, when they were sure she could keep liquids and solid food down, the doctor had the IV drip removed.
She couldn’t concentrate on anything more substantive than magazines and TV shows, and she napped often. When she was awake, Dragos coaxed out of her every detail of what happened.
Then he shared the story of their pursuit, down to the final part when all the sentinels had taken to the air to search for the meadow she had described. With his keen raptor’s gaze, Bayne had caught the movement as Urien and his men had plunged down the incline toward her. They had still been a couple miles away and had hurtled forward with every ounce of speed they possessed.
Every ounce of Dragos’s formidable energy had been focused on taking Urien out before the Fae King had a chance to draw on his considerable Power and fight back. He hadn’t seen Pia get shot, but he had seen her bolt hit Urien high in the shoulder. It hadn’t been a killing shot, but it was enough to distract the Fae King for those few final seconds as Dragos and the sentinels dove down to the attack.
They had all seen her give Urien the finger. The sentinels made much of it as they sprawled on the couches with their feet up on the furniture, ate pizza, drank beer after beer and watched SOAPnet.